Between a bot and a hard place
The same technology that promises to streamline Netflix's production pipeline is casting a long shadow over the global visual effects workforce - from the studios of Los Angeles to the cramped desks of rotoscopers in Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Manila.
In March, Netflix acquired InterPositive, an artificial intelligence company built by Hollywood actor Ben Affleck, for an undisclosed sum. InterPositive automates colour grading, relighting, and continuity fixes - painstaking work currently done frame by frame by artists across India, South Korea, the Philippines, and Latin America.
More than two million professionals work in visual effects globally. Netflix has said it would share the technology only with in-house creative partners and not with rival production companies. Affleck will work with Netflix as a senior adviser.
While AI had already been eroding visual effects jobs before InterPositive, the Affleck name has turned a quiet industry shift into a global conversation.
The impact will be hardest on entry-level workers, according to Mohsin Kazi, a compositing supervisor at DNEG, the eight-time Oscar-winning visual effects company behind 'Dune', 'Interstellar', and 'Blade Runner 2049'.
"If AI tools begin handling tasks like clean-up, relighting, or even base compositing, the biggest impact will be at that entry level," Kazi told Rest of World. "Those early-stage opportunities are where artists traditionally learn by doing."
About 75% of entertainment industry executives were already using AI to remove, reduce, or consolidate jobs in 2023, according to a study commissioned by the Animation Guild and other Hollywood labour groups, which surveyed 300 participants.
The study estimated that as many as 118,500 positions could be lost within three years in the US alone. The global figure has yet to be quantified.
Some industry experts have argued that AI efficiency gains will lead Netflix and other streamers to commission more productions, creating new work to replace what is lost.
But that logic falls apart against the reality of an industry that has been contracting, not expanding, according to Kimberly Owczarski, an associate professor of film, television, and digital media at Texas Christian University.
"That seems unlikely, given the shrinkage in the overall number of film and TV series productions in recent years across the globe," Owczarski told Rest of World.
Los Angeles County alone has lost 41,000 film and television jobs in three years - a quarter of its entertainment workforce.
Netflix, which commissions content in dozens of countries, had more than 325 million subscribers at the end of last year and generated $45.2 billion in revenue. The company did not respond to questions about the impact of its AI capabilities on its international post-production workforce.
More than 90% of Hollywood's rotoscoping work is done in India, according to Joseph Bell, author of the Visual Effects & Animation World Atlas, a comprehensive global survey of the industry's workforce.
Rotoscoping is the frame-by-frame tracing of shapes in live-action footage that allows visual effects to be layered into a scene.
"AI will get there sooner than later, but at the time of writing, the technology hasn't swept away those jobs yet," Bell told Rest of World. "The jobs AI creates may not be the same - or as many - as the jobs that it replaces in the coming years, but it's not a one-way street."
Even before the InterPositive acquisition, Netflix had been investing in AI-powered production. The company opened a new facility called Eyeline Studios on March 12 in Hyderabad, a southern Indian tech hub. The 32,000-square-foot facility is designed for what Netflix calls "generative virtual effects."
Netflix described its approach to AI as focused on "meaningfully serving the needs of the creative community," according to a statement from chief product and technology officer Elizabeth Stone.
The company has not said whether VFX studios in India, South Korea, or Latin America that currently work on Netflix originals will qualify as "creative partners" with access to InterPositive's capabilities.
The fragility of the industry that InterPositive now threatens was exposed weeks before the acquisition. Paris-based Technicolor, one of the world's largest visual effects companies and a key vendor for Disney, Paramount, and Netflix, collapsed under unsustainable debt and abruptly shut down its India operations in February 2025. About 3,000 workers in Bengaluru and Mumbai were left without pay, without notice, and without severance.
In the US, studios are in contract negotiations with Hollywood labour unions, with AI protections a central demand. The post-production workers across India, South Korea, and elsewhere who serve many of the same studios have no equivalent representation.
"Conversations are happening, but mostly informally - within teams, studios, or peer groups - rather than through organized industry channels," Kazi said.